Elizabeth Murray Fred Sandback All Fired Up Fred Sandback at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery Elizabeth Murray at NYs PaceWildenstein Elizabeth Murray's Dream—Mon. Oct 25, 1994 Elizabeth Murray Dies at 66 MoMA Announces Major Acquisitions

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WEST SIDE STORY: ARMORY NEWS

Critical Conversations In a Limo
What's the perfect vehicle for critical discussions of today's contemporary art world? A sleek, pimped-out, champagne-filled, white stretch limo, of course, a conceit cooked up to shuttle people to the DIVA fair. Two intrepid ArtInfo correspondents took the plunge with El Museo del Barrio director Julian Zugazagoitia (with five-year-old son Alex in tow), art historian Horace Brockington, and a motley assortment of artists, cruisin' down the West Side Highway, and it was all being caught on tape. Zugazagoitia kicked-off the debate with some provocative suggestions from Pablo Helguera's Manual of Contemporary Art Style, a tongue-in-cheek etiquette guide to successfully navigating the social ins and outs of the art world. Are collectors the center of power in the art world? What is the role of institutions and of curators? But conversation veered off topic as the champagne flowed. "Have you ever been in love with a curator?" asked one artist. And as in any drunken art world conversation, the topic of Larry Gagosian came up. "Who would not want to be an artist showing with Larry Gagosian?" Zugazagoitia asked. "He would have to take me out to a candlelight dinner first," replied one Latino artist. "I'm not that easy."

Texas Round-Up
Overheard at the Armory: Some of the most important collectors from Austin, Texas have been spotted prowling the piers. "The two richest guys in the city are here with their wives buying art," said one lone-star state gallerist. Among the biggest names, computer electronics mogul Michael Dell of Dell computers has been spied scouting for new talent. In fact, Austin galleries feel a bit snubbed by high-rolling hometown collectors. "We know that they buy art," the gallery owner continued, "They just don't buy it in Austin."

On Threat of Being Disowned
Some dealers are more willing than others to discuss prices with anyone who does not appear to be a potential buyer. When we enquired at PaceWildenstein about the price of a wonderful, large-scale Kiki Smith sculpture, Seer (Alice II) 2005, Marc Glimcher refused to be drawn. “But isn’t it good for business to have people know what an artist’s prices are?” we asked, ‘Why won’t you tell us?’ “Because my father [Pace supremo, Arnie Glimcher] would disown me!” he protested. (The Smith sculpture sold, incidentally.)

Phone Sex at Bärtschi Booth
First-time Armory visitors, Galerie Guy Bärtschi from Geneva are, according to director Gloria de Gaspar, doing good business and enjoying the fair. They are showing works by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy and Cornelia Parker among others, though the stand-out piece at their booth is a classic Wim Delvoye Telephone Sex (2005) “sculpture with tattooed pigskin framed between two glass plates.” It is offered at $45,000.

Watch Your Step
Several booths have bravely placed small, delicate sculptures on the floor, despite the throngs of absent-minded wanderers. One you really wouldn't want to tread on is Mark Manders' small clay baby, with strangely adult features, lying helplessly on its back, with three lumps of clay, like baby building blocks, next to it. Fragment from self-portrait as a building costs $35,000 and lies vulnerable in Antwerp's Zeno X Gallery booth. Gavin Turk's trompe l'oiel pillow, that looks like the real thing but is actually made from bronze, at Galerie Almine Rech is cryptically titled Inheritance. The gallerist also took out a similarly convincing apple core by Turk, also made from bronze, which he was too nervous to put on the floor for fear of it being picked up as garbage. There's another trick with unexpected material being pulled by Kevin Yates' Extension Cords, which lie in a tangle on the floor at Susan Hobbs. Don't kick them though, they're expertly carved from beech wood.

Size Matters
Pier 92 is massive, but you still wonder how they got two shockingly large canvases through the door. Lincolnville, Labor Day, by the ubiquitous Alex Katz, measures a grandiose 2.9 by 5.79 meters and costs $600,000 (it must have cost a pretty penny though to ship it here from the Milan gallery Monica de Cardenas, if indeed that's what they did). Barnaby Furnas' gorgeous behemoth Red Sea at Marriane Boesky beats Katz for size though. It's a whopping 3.5 by 8 meters. The gallery said it's been sold, but wouldn't reveal the price. If it went to a collector rather than a museum, somebody must have a pretty big living room.

Cups Overflowing
As the Armory Show was closing up last night, we headed to Tara Donavan's astonishing opening at PaceWildenstein in Chelsea. Donavan and her assistants took two million transparent plastic cups (which together cost $75,000) and piled them up to various heights to create an enormous undulating landscape that, one critic noted, you just wanted to roll around in. Chuck Close, circling the piece, which also at times resembled clouds seen from a plane, looked very impressed, as was the rest of the crowd.

Drunks or Art?
The procedure for getting on the in-list for Saturday’s “official” Armory Show party was so daunting (“RSVP Only!” “Limited Availability!”) that we came prepared with a press pass, a VIP card and a wealthy friend, in case a few $20s would have to be slipped into someone’s palm. Fortunately, we gained access to the premises, held in the appropriately arty environs (brick-walled and lofty) of the Metropolitan Building in Long Island City, Queens. Once we alighted from the elevator, however, we confess to having been a little underwhelmed by the scene, with nary a D-list celebrity or collector in site. There was, more positively, an open bar, which led to what we think were some genuine over-imbibed casualties sprawled out on the floor. Unless it was performance art.

Upstairs Downstairs
Gallerists consigned to the ‘Armory Editions’ Mezzanine on Pier 92 are far from happy. For some reason they seem to be getting far less traffic than the Pier 90 Mezzanine, location of the ArtInfo sponsored Internet Lounge. In fact, when ArtInfo spoke to Joni Moisant Weyl of Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl the mezzanine was pretty much deserted, despite the fact that immediately beneath us maybe 100 paying Armory Show customers were being prevented from entering because the pier had reached its legal capacity. Ms. Moisant Weyl revealed that she and the other ‘Armory Editions’ dealers such as Brooke Alexander had not been happy with their location from the moment that it had been announced, and had tried to negotiate with the Armory organizers for a less ghetto-ized position. Obviously, without success. So when we asked her whether she was disappointed with trade she replied that she had “less than zero expectations, so it wasn’t a disappointment. We’ve made a few sales, I can’t say better than that.” Among sales that she had made was a unique Elizabeth Murray three-dimensional work on paper, Mulberry (2004-05) that had gone for $15,500. She’ll be bringing in a couple more Murrays from her gallery today. Susan Inglett, whose booth features wooden trays by Andrea Zittel and a range of prints and a couple of drawings by Bruce Conner commented, "Prints should be on the floor with other works by the artists since it is part of the artists’ process." Nevertheless, she acknowledges, people are buying prints and a panel featuring Carroll Dunham and Trenton Doyle Hancock was packed. "The general public is catching on," she says, pointing out that today, "People who are making blue-chip works are making prints, too."

Art for Free
Back at Scope, Rhizome.org is staging All Systems Go as part of the “Cinema-scope” program of new-media, installation, and video art. Curated by Marisa Olson, this show presents installation and sculptural pieces by artists from the Internet community that Rhizome serves so well. Among the more striking pieces is a two-screen homage to Tehching Hsieh entitled 1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate) (2005) by MTAA. Ms. Olson is delighted with the attention the show has had but shrugs and says, “People have been really confused because we’re not looking to make money out of it.”

For Want of a Wall
A middle-aged man standing in front of the naked photograph of Marina Abramovic at Sean Kelly with his twenty-something son asks, “Does your mother have a wall we could stick it on?”

Full House
On Saturday, people were not allowed into Pier 92 because the population had reached its fire-safety limit. Looks like it's a gangbusters show.